Monday, March 2, 2015

On March 2nd, 1836 in the town of Washington on the Brazos (no, really), a group of Texans cooked up a Declaration of Independence, breaking with Mexico and establishing Texas as a Republic.

look, you have your Independence Hall, we have ours

Now, people do this all the time, but history will tell you that it only really counts if you're successful. Otherwise, you're usually a footnote and a shallow grave. Weirdly, the scrappy refugees from polite American society who had migrated into Texas wound up winning their brief war for independence after getting essentially massacred at The Alamo but doing pretty well at Gonzalez and Goliad, thank you very much.

On April 21, 1836, the Texian army, under the command of Sam Houston, caught up with the Mexican army, who seemed to believe that if they were behind enemy lines, so long as they were sleeping, it was a "time out". The Texians stormed in, and in about 30 minutes soundly defeated the Mexican Army and General Antonio de Santa Ana, taking him prisoner.

Texas expected to become a state, but the balance of power in the US made this a challenge - as admitting a new slave state would make things awkward - and the concern over sparking a real war with Mexico meant that Texas would remain an independent Republic for 9 long, extremely poor years.

So, take that, Ohio. You were never your own country and you never fought your own war with generals and cannons and everything.

Texans would go on to become obnoxious, but everyone would move here and keep letting our crackpot politicians drive the national political conversation.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

I am aware that some people lump all country into one huge pile and say they do not care for the genre. And, growing up as a suburban kid on the edge of shit-kicker Texas, I can understand the urge to want to put on the blinders when it comes to pop country. I have been exposed to it since 1979. Much of it it is not to my taste.

But I am not speaking of Country Music Awards winning, flavor of the year, country guy. I'm is Willie Nelson.

And I will punch you in the jaw if you say anything bad about the man.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

As you may have heard, there has been an explosion at a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, a town Texans are familiar with as its on the I-35 corridor between Austin and Dallas, and home to the locally famous Czech Stop (we have a long history of Czech communities in Texas).

As of now, reports are coming in that there are over one-hundred injured and possibly dozens dead.

Red Cross and emergency crews are headed to West from all over. Twitter-pal Ruiz mentioned he knows his workplace sent crews to the scene.

This was a terrible accident, and not the insanity of the Boston bombings, but it's damaged a huge part of a town here in Texas. Obviously.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

On March 2nd, 1836 Texas declared it's independence from Mexico, but we were already begun in the Texas War for Independence.

one of the original Texas battle flags

Yes, there was such a thing as a War for Texas Independence, non-Texans. That's what you're talking about when you discuss "The Alamo".

Basically, Texas was largely unsettled by Anglos and the entire swath of Tejas y Cohauila was sort of Mexican no-man's land with a few remote outposts like San Antonio. Circa 1821, a bunch of rowdies and reprobates made a deal with Mexico to settle in what's sort of Central Texas, but they had to become Mexican citizens and Catholic.

By 1835, the Mexican Government had changed and become more centrist. The local militias were now frowned upon and those shifty Anglos in North Mexico weren't playing ball with Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana's desire to disarm regional militias lest they decide they wanted to rabble rouse. If the past informs the present, you'd have to imagine if Obama suddenly said folks couldn't have guns, and people started acting kookie about how the government might take away their arms.

Wait a minute...

There were other issues, such as the forced Catholicism of the Mexican Government, that Texans really, really wanted to own slaves, and Mexico city just sort of sucked at paying attention to what was going on in Texas aside from the occasional decree that made no sense in context of living on a frontier.

President and General of Mexico, Santa Ana, had absolutely had it with the Texians (we used to have an "i" in our name) and marched an army up to, of all places, Gonzalez, where the Texians insisted on hanging onto a cannon.

Our own Fantomenos asked:You're a Texan so:What's the best cut of meat for casual grilling?

Again, these are advanced level questions with no simple answer.

What's throwing me here is the use of the word "casual". "Casual" can mean "I'm coming home from work, do you want me to grab some chicken on my way?" It can mean having over 20 people, but we're all in shorts. It can mean dinner with a few friends, or it can mean the assembly line at a summer camp.

So, let's ponder this a bit.

I'd break it down to:

steaks and chicken

BBQ

hotdogs and hamburgers on the Weber on the back porch

While barbecue is sometimes served at weddings, political events, etc... and you can definitely find upscale barbecue in town (I recommend Lamberts), the barbecue that's considered most desirable is usually slow cooked and smoked to perfection. That, obviously, is not a "casual" task, even if it's one's hobby and you're doing it at home. Seriously, it's an all day affair.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

The evening was looking pretty dull, I don't mind telling you. We had no plans. The hour grew late, and finally, somehow we settled on the faded glory of an Austin now receding into the distant past.

You can have your Paul Qui fancy-schmancy fusion bistros. Food is what reminds you of home, and I grew up in this town when we still had armadillo races as a form of local fun. And back then, we ate our pizza like we had nothing to live for. Conan's Pizza has only a few locations left after the expansion in the late 80's and contraction of the late 90's. They haven't redecorated since putting any of the Conan's in place, and they had a particular look back then that lingers to this day.

The Ms. Pac-Man machine is not there ironically

If you're wondering, why yes, they LOVE Conan the Barbarian. You can't tell from the pic above, but most of the art is either Frazetta prints or Frazetta knock-offs. Not too many other places would it seem like part of the tradition to eat under a Molly Hatchet album cover, but at Conan's, it's part of the ambiance.

The pizza you want to get there is called "The Savage". Get it deep dish with a wheat crust or you're kind of just wasting everyone's time. The Savage is literally every topping they've got. You will absolutely feel sick after eating it. But, let me stop you now and say, if you don't eat The Savage, neither I nor the staff nor other patrons of Conan's have any real reason to respect you.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Not that long ago I was sitting in my office at work making digital libraries happen when a guy from my building who I talk to now and again, mostly "howdy" and "hello" as we pass, asked me about some posters from Mondo I have hanging up in my office.

"You like sci-fi?"
"Yeah! It's kind of my thing. Not so much the modern stuff, but I kind of dig mid-century stuff and maybe up to the 80's the best."
"Cool!"
And we parted ways.
A few days later Bill appeared in my doorway with a DVD in his hand.
"A while back, my son and I made this movie."
My stomach dropped. I like a good Birdemic trainwreck, but I like it from a casual distance. I do not like to have to nod and smile and say "that was super!" when it was not super at all. Then I looked down at the cover.

"...is that Ron Jeremy?"
Bill nodded. "Yeah, we hired him for a day. All green screen. He was really nice."
"This is... like, everything awesome about movies."

Friday, November 23, 2012

I am a child of the 70's and 80's, and was living in the Dallas area circa 1979-1981 and Houston, after that. There were four channels at the time. We all watched Dallas. Yes, we all knew who JR Ewing was. And, like much of America, I also wondered who had shot JR.

He drinks your milkshake

Son of actress Mary Martin and a native Texan, Hagman's relationship with Texas continued on and off for most of his life.* Hagman was a major wheel in TV, both in the US and abroad, where the show ran in re-runs well past when the show had been cancelled.

Later, I'd start watching re-runs of I Dream of Jeannie, where Larry Hagman played astronaut Tony Nelson. He got to be on TV with Barbara Eden every week, and that ain't bad.

Major Nelson was never any Darren-like pushover

Readers of this blog will also remember him from Superman: The Movie as the Army officer who bravely steps up and assists Valerie Perrine when she fakes an auto accident to distract a convoy for Lex.

bravely, bravely ponders a stricken Valerie Perrine

Hagman had recently returned to TV in a reboot of Dallas, and was enjoying a second wind of stardom.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

About two and a half-years ago, Austinites woke up to find that some deal had been reached to bring Formula 1 racing to our city. Mostly, the news was met with puzzled stares. This is not a motorsports kind of town, and F1 is something that takes place in Monte Carlo, not in our berg.

If you do not know (I didn't), F1 is monstrously popular everywhere but the US, and despite astronomically high tickets prices, tends to draw hundreds of thousands of people to each city. Rich people. Who supposedly spend money.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

It is safe to say I am about done with the schedule I've been on for the past 6 weeks or so and the Thanksgiving Holiday cannot really come fast enough. I could really use some time just laying very still while someone else makes cornbread stuffing and lets me silently appreciate the Rockettes during their number at the Macy's Parade.

if loving the Rockettes is wrong, I don't want to be right

TX Secession

I know it made headlines, but the petition sent to the White House and chatter about Texas seceding is all that it is. Chatter. The petition doesn't have enough signatures to fill half of DKR Memorial Stadium, and a whole lot of those aren't from Texas. I expect that in the years to come "secession" will be the pouty rallying cry of Texans wishing they could take their ball and go home when things don't go the way of insignificant politians from scrubby, backwater towns in The Lone Star State (seriously, press, stop giving these people a megaphone).

Sunday, August 26, 2012

I can't recommend KiIller Joe (2011) for a general audience, so let's get that out of the way first. The movie made the hard choice to (a) get made and (b) not water itself down, and that meant an NC-17 rating. I can't even remember the last time I saw a movie with this rating, but even R-rated movies generally have a few swears these days and its mostly intended to keep people from bringing their kids with them to the 9:00 show of the latest Scorsese picture. Basically, nobody really has the guts to do a Hard R movie these days (except the Hangover guys, I guess) and so an NC-17 should be box office death.

The movie is based upon a play by Tracy Letts which ran off-broadway some 14 years ago. Its been adapted here to the big screen by Letts and directed by William Friedkin, director of The Exorcist, The French Connection and a host of other films, but the last movie of his I saw was Blue Chips (which I actually quite enjoyed).

It's a deep-fried southern noir in the darkest corners of white trash America, and reads somewhat like one of those news stories you can both believe occurred - predicated on the notion that all of the players were unsympathetic, near-illiterate dopes whose grasp was further than their reach when it came to planning - and still find the fact that someone ever started this plan to begin with stupefying.

But, like I say, it feels a hell of a lot like a true-crime story, in its way.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Today I had no lunch plans, and so I got up from my desk and walked to the UT Tower, arriving just before 11:48 AM. The University of Texas doesn't do anything in particular to commemorate the day every year, and certainly not the time. When they do hold events, which does happen from time to time, I am uncertain if they hold them on the day and time of shootings.

So, walking up to the Tower, it was the usual mishmash you see in August. Tourists. Summer school students. Kids on campus for camp, a mixed bag of college aged people engaged in group activities you can't quite puzzle out.

The sky was clear today and the temperatures were in the high 90's. Despite the lunch hour, not many folks walked the main plaza, an area most folks know is often hot and free of shade. I'd venture that few were aware of the date.

I snapped a picture of the flagpole from our earlier post. It's not quite as far from a door as I thought, but it's still a good 30 yards, and that's if you cleared the hedge.

On August 1, 1966 Charles Whitman killed both his mother and his wife while they slept. He went and purchased firearms from local shops, then drove to UT Austin's central tower.

Then, as today, the tower was an administrative building and, at the time, was also the library for UT Austin. It still looms well above all other features not just on campus, but for much of the surrounding territory. From the top of the tower, one has a panoramic view in all directions, far out to the hills of West Austin, into downtown to the South if you look beyond the South Mall and the older buildings on campus that surround the grassy strip, usually strewn with students studying and socializing. To the East lies the stadium and a great swath of campus, and to the North, the science buildings, and past that, the Hyde Park neighborhood.

I went up the first time in 2000 shortly after the Tower's observation deck re-opened for the first time since a rash of suicides in the 1970's. No, Whitman's atrocity didn't convince the University that it needed to be closed.

On that morning, Whitman took a footlocker full of weapons with him to the top of the tower, and knocked an administrative assistant unconscious with his rifle (she would die later at Seton Hospital). He would show a final and baffling act of mercy as he let a couple who had not seen the secretary's unconscious form bypass him, and then he barricaded the door. Moments later he would kill and wound several tourists who came to the door seeking to go out to the Tower's observation deck.

Whitman took advantage of the unimpeded vantage provided by the 27 story tower and began firing down upon students and faculty walking between buildings. For about 100 minutes Whitman held Austin hostage between Guadalupe and the East Mall, from the North Mall to far past the South Mall, where visibility goes down to 21st Street and further down University Avenue.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

In a day or two Allison B and Chris Roberson pack up and depart Austin for the untamed wilderness that is Portland, Oregon, where they will most certainly be eaten by a bear.

I shall miss their hospitality, and Austin in poorer for their departure. It is an odd thing to find oneself in the company of a writer you truly enjoy and respect first, and then get to make their acquaintance as a family unit living in the same town.

Here's to a great family as they set off on an all new adventure.

Portland, be nice to these folks. They're all right. And please find them decent tacos.

Monday, March 5, 2012

The first time I tried to watch Giant (1956)was in 1998. It came on one of our local affiliates as the Sunday afternoon movie, and I sat down on what passed for a sofa in the living room of what passed for an apartment and started watching. For some reason the audio was messed up, and was broadcasting too quietly. I tried calling the station about a half-dozen times over the course of an hour, but nobody was answering the line at KTBC that day, and so I eventually gave up.

Later I'd rent the movie on Netflix and fail to watch it. I once went to the Paramount Theater in Austin to see the movie, and had gotten my dates wrong and saw Black Sunday instead. I didn't know I was in the wrong movie until the first frames rolled, and, boy howdy, was I confused.

Last year Jason's lady-friend, AmyD, loaned me the DVD, and somehow we just never watched it. But it came on cable a few weeks back, and I finally DVR'd the movie.

Monday, February 6, 2012

Tonight I am in Lubbock. And tomorrow night I leave Lubbock. I won't be home until near midnight, so do not look for me.

I'm up here visiting Texas Tech University, a pretty darn good school pretty darn near as far away from the rest of the world as possible. Sort of a reminder of how spread out we are once you pass west of the Mississippi. Fortunately, I haven't had to go to El Paso yet for work, but I might one day. And when I do, I might see about going to Ft. Davis or something you hear about in Texas, but you kind of have to really want to do.

This time to Lubbock I flew rather than drive my own car. I had believed the Lubbock airport took turbo props from Dallas, but learned en route from SF a couple weeks back that jets come here. It wasn't a 737, and I forgot to look to see what carried me here, but I'll look on the way back. It sure beats the 8 hour drive.

Anyhow, limited blogging for several days. I'm sure you'll all get along just fine.

Friday, November 25, 2011

I did not expect UT to win the annual Thanksgiving game against Texas A&M. Yes, the UT Longhorns were ranked, and A&M had slipped from ranking, but this year, UT's ranking fortunes have just felt like a fluke of other's misfortunes and some oddly-had luck more than the hard-earned rankings of the COlt McCoy and VY years. While I do believe our defense has been fairly effective this season, its clear the Longhorn offense is still a mess.

In the end, it came down to a last second field goal kicked by UT's Justin Tucker, who has been near-flawless all season. But it also came down to UT's defense uncharacteristically more or less rolling over to A&M's fairly punishing drive in the final minutes, looking for all the world like a team that was going to have the last word. And, of course, Case McCoy demonstrating some clear thinking in the last minute that he really hadn't shown too much this season.

I hope Texas Aggies feel like it was a good game. We were certainly consoling ourselves with this thought at the 1:25 mark in the 4th quarter when we watched the UT lead melt away.

But then Tucker made the field goal. So, it was a good night to be a Longhorns fan.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Thanks to the heroic efforts of local firefighters, the abode of The KareBear and The Admiral still stands tall.

If you're catching up, their area of Austin, Steiner Ranch, was one of several areas experiencing wildfire thanks to drought conditions (and, it turns out, some power lines shooting sparks). I'm not clear on how close the fire came, but it was still a bit away, so its not as if it burned right up to their property line and then respectfully stopped, not wanting to give The Admiral a bad day.

The folks have been out to the house, checked it for problems, and have headed back to Houston until next weekend.

Unfortunately, there's no rain in our forecast, and we do have dry and breezy conditions forecast for the next week. That ain't good. All of Texas needs about a week of solid rain, as wildfires are breaking out across the entire state. We're going from an agricultural problem to a potential catastrophe of state-wide proportions.

Here's to our emergency responders, who are working around the clock to save the day.

Monday, September 5, 2011

While the East Coast has been experiencing severe weather, and Louisiana has been grappling with a tropical storm, since the 4th of July, most of Texas has been dealing with record breaking heat by standards of both intensity and duration. Add in the fact that it simply will not seem to rain here, and the Central Texas region, which is home to Austin has become a wildfire waiting to happen.

Fires of various sizes have been cropping up all summer, and its a credit to the firefighters that while we've definitely lost homes and property, by and large the disasters have not spread completely out of control. Until now.

I'm afraid its gotten pretty bad out there. My folks bought a house in North Austin they're retiring to before Thanksgiving, and were in town for the weekend for the UT/ Rice game. Unfortunately, wildfires caught out in their area, and right now they're evacuated to my... sofa, actually. Its fairly nerve-wracking watching the news and seeing the devestation. And the crazy part is that Steiner Ranch isn't even the part of town hardest hit. Bastrop, a former small town - now a bedroom community, is getting hit really hard.

Anyhow, I may be distracted for a while dealing with my folks' situation and real life, so I ask that you bear with us.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

I know "y'all" has taken off in the national lexicon thanks to the adoption in hip-hop, but it was a Southern thing. At that, when I was a kid and everyone was a transplant, we were being taught not to say "y'all" in school as it supposedly made us look a bit hill-billyish. It did not stick.

"Y'all" is a highly functional word, and anyone who lives in Texas knows the many, many meanings of the word (as demonstrated above by Ms. Tami Taylor). Yup, it's from "You all", which up north, I guess is "You guys". But it tends to pepper the conversation quite a bit more as a friendly, informal manner of address, and is used to warm up formal situations.

By the way, you hear people imitating Texans saying "y'all" to a single individual. This is incorrect. If "y'all" is said to an individual, say, over the phone, you should assume they have just asked about either everyone in your immediate vicinity ("Are y'all about to leave?") or your entire family or household ("what are y'all up to this weekend?"). It's a form of address to large crowds ("Y'all, I need your attention.") and a way of expressing despair ("Aw, y'all...").

A warning to those not from below the Mason-Dixon line: if you ever hear the phrase "f-bomb all y'all", something has gone very wrong, indeed, with the Texan with whom you are conversing. You can assume the famous Southern hospitality has just been dropped for that famous Southern hostility.